Meet Graham Nash

Graham Nash has lived an exciting life, but he never thought about putting it in writing until he started to have grandchildren. Nash is 72 and said he still feels 25, but his granddaughter is only 16 months old and he recently found out he has twin grandchildren on the way.

To make sure there’s a record of his experiences, he wrote “Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life.” He’ll sign copies Monday at Barnes & Noble and the next night will sing for a sold-out crowd at the Civic Center as part of Crosby, Stills & Nash.

“I never thought I was old enough to write an autobiography, but so many of my friends have dropped dead in my life,” Nash said during a phone interview from his home in Hawaii. “My three children have attended a thousand of my concerts and know who I am, but Stella Joy doesn’t. Hopefully I’ll be alive when (my grandchildren are) all teenagers. But with all due respect, how much longer can life go on when you’re in your 70s?”

Nash shares a lot of juicy rock ’n’ roll stories in the book, but he didn’t make a lot of phone calls asking per­mission or giving people a heads up. There were only two — the first was his wife, Susan, because Nash was planning to discuss his affair with Joni Mitchell (years before he met Susan), and his CSN bandmate David Crosby.

For the latter, Crown Publishing’s legal department wanted to be 100 percent certain that a story Nash shared about Crosby selling his Mer­cedes to a drug dealer for crack was correct. The dealer overdosed and Crosby broke into the dealer’s home, stole the pink slip and sold the car again, also for crack. Crosby had recounted the story in his autobi­ography, “Long Time Gone,” but they needed confirmation from the source.

“I didn’t ask anyone’s permission, and that’s why I closed the book with the sentence ‘This is how I remember it,’ ” Nash said. “Because we all have our truths. To this day Stephen Stills thinks the first time we ever sang together was in Cass’ (Elliot) kitchen. Absolutely not true, it was in Joni’s (Mitchell) living room. No doubt about it. Clear as day in my mind and in David’s mind, but not quite in Stephen’s mind.

“Yes, we did sing at Cass’ because she was our dear friend, but I’ll never forget where it was that we first made the vocal blend. Stephen is wrong. But his truth is it was Cass’ kitchen and he’s sticking to it. My point is that we all have our truths.”

The trio’s relationship has waxed and waned over the years, but at this point Nash feels that Crosby, Stills & Nash is something that can endure as long as the fans want to keep hearing them perform together. And as long as they keep working on new material.

Nash has been described as the glue that’s held CSN together. He thinks it’s a different world view from his bandmates (Nash is English and was born during World War II, Crosby and Stills are American) that helped him to keep things on the right course for the act.

“My country was almost bombed out of existence twice in 80 years. It’s a very different attitude that you grow up with. David and Stephen and Neil (Young) never had that in their lives. It’s a very different way of growing up. I’m thankful for every day.”